I'm travelling 7+ hours to make it. What's your excuse? Nah, I understand it's hard to fill a 67,000 stadium in such a short time. But seriously, let's fill it the fuck up! Too bad I can't get tix for the Portland leg...

Sounders regularly sell 38-40K per home match. The 65K+ matches are impressive, but they’re an outlier. It takes a season long, deliberate, concerted effort to sell discounted tickets to those matches as a package deal. The Sounders are not yet in a position where they will sell that many tickets for a playoff match on three days notice.

I don't think they will. The only reason they opened the upper bowl this year was that they had some ticket package that included 5 games in which everything was opened. I don't think they have enough time to sell 67k tickets.

Northwest crowds are notoriously fickle. If you lose 6 in a row, with arguably the most talented team on paper,heading into the playoffs where your team has a pattern of underperforming...wouldnt you think twice about being out until midnight on a Wednesday? I love the sounders, but that's a "watch on tv" game, for me.

But, now that they seem to have found some form, I think its a no brainer for them to open up the top deck. You don't open up the top deck for regular season cascadia matches and then not do just that with a trophy on the line...

Sounders fans, behind the goals, are pretty young. But there are also a lot of older professional people abs and people with kids in the crowd. I'd be there (am 28/professional /no kids), but I know my dad would stay home.

Plus having just played on Sunday as well, mid-week game, etc. Was at the match last night, still looked great. The Hawk's Nest thinned out after the half when the rain kicked back up but still a stellar crowd.

This statement is contrary to reality. The Mariners and Seahawks have both had multiple consecutive years of sucking without losing attendance. Mariners attendance now is still far from the bottom of the league and they haven't been competitive in over a decade.

Of course they dropped, the question is by how much. Seattle sports teams have repeatedly shown to drop attendance slower than most other cities, so saying "Northwest crowds are notoriously fickle" is just nonsense.

Every sports team everywhere in the world loses fans when they do badly. Miami and Boston fans are "notoriously fickle", they drop attendance by half if they have one bad season. Again, the mariners have been complete shit for more than a decade. Losing fans after a full decade of failure does not make the fans "fickle".

You are entitled to your own opinion, bit not entitled to your own facts."

You're wrong. The three major draws (historically) in the Seattle area are the Washington huskies, Seattle Seahawks, and the Seattle mariners.

The last time the Seattle mariners went to the playoffs, they averaged 43,362 fans. In every year since, the average attendance has dropped, by thousands, with the exception of a slight rise in 2007. The mariners average attendance in 2013 was 21, 258....a decrease of %51 (over half) since the last playoff team.

I think you're partially right in your assessmant of Seattle fans. We're notoriously fairweather. That said, I wouldn't have missed last nights match for the world, and seeing all the empty seats that were there made me a little disappointed.

I get a little annoyed at the downvotes in my assesment. Listen i get it: I wish everybody in the stadium knew all the words to all the songs, and stood and yelled the entire time.

However, the "you're either with us or against us" attitude is pretty incompatible with the current state of MLS popularity, and with sporting in the U.S. generally.

As much as I dislike people who take a less committed attitude to the team, I try to look on the bright side and think, "hey, without them, we don't have the resources or the atmosphere to have what a lot of people covet."

The best you can do is say, "this person is showing some feigning interest...lets see if we can get even more enthusiasm and dedication from them." With that in mind, you attracted a lot more flies with honey than vinegar.

Maybe i'm just having one of those life crises where i'm constantly assessing the way my life is in my twenties, and the way my life is looking to be in my thirties, but...there are a lot of people with responsibilities that are more important than a soccer match, and I wouldn't blame them if they didn't want to spend their time and money and sleep attending something that, from the outset of the match, is only likely to make you feel bad. As a rational person, thats a losing prospect. Now add in the fact that its a weeknight, and you're going to be up late tomorrow night with your sugar high kids, etc, etc, etc

I'm just saying, cut those people some slack. It doesn't make us any less of a city, or any less fans of soccer. If some guy stays home, so he can get to work on time so that he can drop $300 for his family's tickets on hotdogs on saturday...than i can accept that.

Yeah, I was initially like "wow, they did regular season numbers" once the match started, but then I looked over at the 200-level seats on the western side and noticed most of them were empty-ish. Still, given the turnaround that's to be expected.

And tickets didn't go on sale immediately after the game. I believe it was 10a on Monday...whereas last night, people were in line to purchase tickets immediately after the game ended, as the box office was open.

I think I expected that a couple years ago and realized that it doesn't really happen that way because of turnaround and I think a subsection of the people who go who just pick out games well in advance and maybe aren't so diehard. The conference final vs. LA drew 45K, so it was higher attendance that time, but there was also way more time to sell those tickets.

I remember reading about this when they first went on sale. The Seahawks have close to 60,000 season ticket holders. After bulk corporate buys and various other ticket programs and giveaways they said that the general public only had access to a few thousand tickets for each of the 8 home games. So that time window you are talking about was for maybe 20-40k total ticket sales for games that were months and months down the road, and the sale date for those tickets was announced months ahead of time. With such a small number of tickets and such a huge crush for them of course they are going to sell fast. It's a completely different scenario.

Our beers are 25% off an hour before kickoff. They used to give a concessions discount to pre-MLS season ticket holders but quietly stopped it early this year and people got pissed, so they said, hell with it, we'll do it for everyone. $6.50 for a 20oz Oregon microbrew. When you consider $4-5 for a 16oz pint in a bar, plus $1 tip, it's incredibly reasonable. plusthey'rereallybadatcheckingyouforflasksonthewayin

I think he only posted it because a while back a lot of Sounders fans were making fun of the Portland Timbers because they offered a groupon for one of their USOC games. I remember Seattle was giving them a really hard time about it so I'm guessing this is payback?

This is really what's important. That one area (Hawks Nest) - at least for the Sounders - typically has the most resale on StubHub of any area. It's almost predictable. Not at all surprised that they're looking to fill it...especially since what it looks like on TV if it's not.

I will presume they'll slowly open up the stadium based on how sales go. They're definitely moving decently from what I hear anecdotally, but we shall see!